


i fell (in your arms tonite)

by LAON



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Coda, Communication, Episode 9: Created Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt Alphonse Elric, Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved Alphonse Elric, al gets his hug, ed is stressed, like between fighting envy and gluttony and going to briggs, like lots of hurt but a good deal of comfort too, or like sort of a coda to that episode but it takes place a lot later, probably touch-starved ed too but at least he can feel physical affection when he does get it, working title give al a hug 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22616017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LAON/pseuds/LAON
Summary: “You could- You could hug me more?”Ed goes very cold very fast.In which Ed is trying to be a good brother but Al is making it hard.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Alphonse Elric
Comments: 15
Kudos: 163





	i fell (in your arms tonite)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LIL SIS](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=LIL+SIS).



> title from the song by Mother Mother.
> 
> this fic is dedicated to my lil sis!! for her birthday!! because she’s the best and i lov her!! also she made me watch fma and kindly (correctly) informed me that my primary love language is physical affection so here! is! some! hugs!

“Tell me what to do so you can feel more human.”

“What?” Al blinks at him, sort of innocently confused in the same way he gets when Ed tells him to leave behind the stray cat he’s just picked up. It’s usually more fake-innocent-confusion-to-mess-with-Ed, admittedly, because Al is a bastard like that, but still. There’s no way Al doesn’t know what he’s talking about, though, and Ed isn’t feeling particularly patient.

“If you believed Barry that easily when he tried to trick you, there’s gotta be things that make you feel not human, right?” Ed asks.

The innocent look melts away and Al gives him a long, considering look. The Winry-voice in the back of his head yells at him about being insensitive, but this is all Ed can do. He can give Al his own very-serious-big-brother look, as if Al isn’t the one taking care of him half the time, and he can ask:

“So how can I help you feel more human?”

He can’t guess about this like Al can. He doesn’t understand people the same Al does. He doesn’t  _ notice _ when things go wrong unless there’s a property-damage suit involved or Al points it out. If he could, he’d have done something about before it got so bad Al took the word of a serial killer over his own on a topic like  _ whether he’s human _ . Ed doesn’t even really know what  _ it _ is.

“Ed-” Al starts in his careful you-won’t-like-this voice, and usually Ed appreciates how that voice makes people look at Al with a bit more human kindness, and at Ed with a bit more fear, but now-

“What?” he snarls and hates how Al’s shoulders sag a bit.

“No,” he says, “there’s nothing.” He scrapes his finger over a crack in the concrete roof they’re sitting on. Dust and pebbles come loose, rustling softly. Al looks stricken when he pulls his hand away and tucks both of them in his lap. Ed swallows.

“Al, c’mon. There’s gotta be something. I know it’s- We’re working on it. We’re gonna get your body back, but in the meantime there’s gotta be something I can do to help you feel better. You shouldn’t feel like there might be something to what a dick like Barry says, y’know?” 

Al flinches. The Winry-voice yells some more in a way that tells Ed that if the real Winry was here, she’d be busting out her toolbox to beat him over the head. He grimaces to himself.

“I don’t- I don’t feel like there was anything to it. I was just upset at the time,” Al says, withdrawn.

“Like hell. You don’t have to make light of your feelings or whatever for my sake, Al-” Al starts to interrupt, but Ed raises his left hand to stop him, “-but that’s not what I’m talking about, bro. I just wanna help, okay? Like I said, with everything going on, there’s a good chance it’ll take some time to get our bodies back to normal, so in the meantime I wanna help you feel better. Like there’s gotta be something, right? We could get you a real big bed, or a hat or I dunno- Hell, Al, we could get you a cat.”

Ed realises his mistake in the very same moment that Al glances up at him with a half-hearted version of the sort of mischievous look he gets right before he’s about to mess with Ed. They’re never gonna get back on the damn topic now.

“Really? You’d do that? You’d actually let me get a cat?” Al starts, back to smug bastard like he’s flipped a switch. Smug bastard. Ed levels him with a very serious glare. By the way Al laughs at him, he guesses it came out more constipated.

“Even a stray?” Al wheedles. He’s such a little brother. Ed actually thinks about it for a moment, about continuing all their travels with a needy little creature dogging their heels and getting fur all over their research. He shivers.

“Al-”

Al chuckles but sobers quickly.

“I suppose…” he hedges. He’s looking into the distance again, which isn’t a bad view really. The sky is blue, the clouds are fluffy, there are no explosions or other nasty business for them to deal with within eye’s reach. Ed, unfortunately, doesn’t have the patience for cloud-watching when he’s trying to hold a conversation.

“Yeah?”

Al fidgets for another long moment.

“You could- You could hug me more?”

Ed goes very cold very fast. It’s a bit like that one year they had snow back in Resembool and the roof of the house ended up lined in icicles. Winry had dared him to lick one that had fallen to the ground and he figured it would be neat since it looked so much like an ice lolly. It wasn’t actually an ice lolly, of course, and his tongue had gotten stuck. He remembers the burning cold and the sort of distant shouting of extreme amusement and blind panic from Winry and Al while he panicked at the top of his lungs and his new icicle tongue wagged like Den the Dog’s. It feels a bit like that except the cold is in his heart and the panicked screaming is just in his head and also there is no amusement. Anywhere. 

What kind of suggestion is that, anyway? He hugs Al, of course he does. He definitely hugged him- When?

He realises he has been staring into the air next to Al’s face when he registers a funny clicking sound coming from somewhere nearby, low down. He feels it before he sees it, the funny twitching of his automail fingers. He would be worried, or at least start planning a call to Winry, if it wasn’t for the fact that his flesh hand is also doing this funny shaking thing, so it’s probably not a mechanical error. He swallows loudly.

Al reanimates very suddenly in the corner of his vision, blustering like he does when he thinks he’s messed up. Has he messed up? No, there’s nothing for him to mess up. Ed, on the other hand, apparently doesn’t hug his brother enough. He can’t even remember-

“I just mean-!” Al exclaims, “When we were little, before everything, we used to hug a lot, you know? Or you’d ruffle my hair or let me hold your hand when I was scared and I just. I miss it, you know?”

Ed sort of feels like he’s about to cry. There’s the familiar itch of the beginning of stuffiness in his nose and the salty burn at the corners of his eyes. He’s used to the feeling but he hasn’t actually been this close since- Since. Looking up at Al’s expression, human as they come, he’s suddenly hit by a memory that reverberates in the back of his mind, of Mr. Curtis patting the top of Al’s helmet, and Al’s childlike pleasure at it. 

_ No one’s patted my head in this body _ , he’d said.

Shit. 

Shit.

Oh god.

“But- I touch you all the time, right?” Ed tries, “Like the- The other day, I fist-bumped you!”

“You fist-bumped my chest plate, brother,” Al says gently. Like he’s trying to protect Ed. Ed is the oldest, he’s not supposed to-

Shit. 

Holy shit.

“It’s fine, brother, really, I just- Since you asked.”

His brain is rushing too fast, like when he’s almost cracked an encoded alchemy journal only too fast. He can’t grasp the thoughts properly. They won’t stay still when he reaches for them.

“We hugged after I escaped Gluttony’s stomach. Remember? We did, Al!”

Al is silent. Ed looks up at him - and up and up - and recognises the quiet disappointment in his eyes, even if Al probably doesn’t mean for him to see it.

“I guess. But, brother, that was a life or death situation and it was more just me checking you for injuries. I’d- I’d like real hugs, just because you care, y’know? And not because we almost just died, or just the one hug! I just- I wanna feel like someone you’d wanna hug. Human, like you said.”

And it makes sense. It does. If he thinks about it really hard, and he is, Ed can’t really recall hugging Al just for the hell of it for a very long time now. Even before they attempted transmutation, they’d spent a long time not hugging even though they used to all the time. 

Before, they hugged in the clumsy way children do. They wrestled over toys, over hugs from Mom, in the dirt, mostly for the hell of it. They could share their toys just fine, Mom always had more than enough hugs for both of them, and getting completely covered in mud was just fun every time. 

After, it turned into more casual affection. It was reassurance that they were both still there as far as Ed is concerned. He remembers sleeping back to back on the deserted island during Teacher’s apprenticeship test from hell and feeling comforted by the knowledge that Al was still breathing right next to him even if Mom was gone. They used to high-five, too, when they found promising leads on transmutation, and sometimes Ed would sling an arm around Al’s shoulder and jostle him because he felt like it.

Before, they used to climb into the same bed when Al had nightmares, but now Al doesn’t even sleep anymore. Ed feels acutely aware of all the emptiness inside him, hollow in a way that almost replicates the way his arm feels when he gets phantom-limb and starts thinking his automail is flesh and bone. If Ed misses the quiet assurance of Al’s breathing, living presence, what mustn’t Al feel?

“Shit,” he squeezes his eyes shut for a second, then looks up at his little brother, “Shit, Al. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, brother, I understand. Look, it’s fine-”

Al raises a huge paw of a gauntlet-hand and reaches for Ed’s shoulder. Ed shifts out of the way out of instinct, which is also weird because when did brushing shoulders become a deliberate shift of giving and filling airspace, equivalent exchange where there was never any need for it?

“No. Oh no, you don’t,” Ed says before he quite realises what he’s saying or what’s happening. Al sort of jerks and withdraws his hand. The look he gives Ed is wide-eyed and betrayed. Shit. Fucked it up again.

“No wait, Al- Oh, geez,” Ed drags his flesh hand across his face, before he looks up again. He’s gonna fix this the right way. “Look, c’mere, you big lug,” he says and opens his arms as far as they can go.

Al just stares so Ed takes matters into his own hands. Al is really too tall for him to do this but Ed figures he can work it out for his brother’s sake. He scoots over and half reaches, half climbs to put his arm around Al; left arm under Al’s arm and right arm over the opposite shoulder. His breastplate is too wide to reach across properly and too cold and solid to be quite comfortable but Ed doesn’t care. He snakes his automail hand past the big, badass spikes on Al’s shoulder and puts it on the back of Al’s helmet, nudging him to rest his head in the crook of his neck. Al doesn’t budge at first, stiff as armour, but then he shifts and it’s like he comes back into himself. His metal arms wrap around Ed’s back - not as uncomfortable as expected - and he lets his head be guided until Ed is cradling him.

“I’m supposed to hug you, remember?” 

Al makes a weird noise and squeezes Ed closer. It’s actually sort of comfortable, once you get used to it. There’s something oddly comforting about hugging Al’s big form beyond the familiarity of his brother. It’s been a long time since he was able to separate Al from this body in his mind, but there’s something about it that feels familiar beyond the knowledge he knows about. Like something adjacent to himself.

His automail clacks against the back of Al’s head when he tries to rub it like he used to rub Al’s hair after a nightmare. Al makes another funny noise in a way that resonates from his torso into Ed’s. It’s not the same, but it still reminds him of Al’s heartbeat against his back on the survival island. His flesh arm tightens involuntarily in a way that makes Al’s backplate and breastplate push together. Al makes another noise and squeezes even harder himself. It cuts off Ed’s airways, too close, and he’s loath to make Al let go but also he would like to not pass out.

“Ow,” he gasps out. It doesn’t hurt, it’s mostly pressure, but it’s a lot of pressure and it’s the only sound he can make.

Al lets go.

“Sorry!” Al makes another one of the funny noises, stronger this time, “I’m sorry, broth-brother.”

Al tries to pull away, but Ed doesn’t let him. He holds on and lets Al sort of flail his arms as he likes. He pats Al’s back with his flesh hand.

“Aw no, Al, hey. It’s okay, just try not to hold me too tight, all right? I can’t breathe.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. C’mon, you can still hug back, just be careful.”

“O-okay.” 

Al’s arms come back up around his back, much gentler than before. He’s never heard Al cry in this form before, not properly, but he thinks the weird vibrations behind his breastplate might be it. It makes him want to punch something which, admittedly, many things do, but this is a different kind of punch-y. This makes him want to crush something, or hell, even grind it to dust, under his automail hand, but there’s nothing to crush. The only person responsible for this is himself. 

He wants to punch himself.

He settles for patting Al’s back again and making an attempt to sort of rock him. It doesn’t go super well, but they sort of sway a bit so it’s good enough.

“Shh, little brother,” he mutters, “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

**Author's Note:**

> i've always been fascinated by how well-adjusted and not codependent ed and al are so have some slightly less well-adjusted but still healthy fluff
> 
> thanks for reading! feel free to drop a comment for my sister’s sake!


End file.
